April 18, Home to Gold Beach Oregon

Today we cruised down Highway 101 from Tillamook to Gold Beach. We have been cruising this road many times since we moved here 17 years ago. It is a truly incredible stretch of road that I do not think I can do justice. We also realized how spoiled we are having such ready access to this road as today was a little hazy so we were kind of ho hum as we passed on a lot of the spectacular pull outs along the road.

We stopped at two light houses that we had not visited before, the Yaquina Head light house in Newport and the Umpqua River light house. As we were coming into Newport Ton and I were debating whether we had been there. We decided to go visit to see and it turns out we had somehow missed it in our previous trips. This lighthouse is managed by the BLM and has quite a nice visitor center. The Yaquina Head lighthouse is the tallest of the Oregon lighhouses and is located on a nice head land with great views of the ocean. The other lighhouse is quite different it is run by the Oregon State Parks, but is located in the middle of a neighborhood of Coast Guard family housing. You can see the lighhouse but cannot approach it as it is fenced off as part of the perimeter of the Coast Guard housing. The housing is a typical style of housing that was built in the 60’s but the location is great, one of the benfits of military housing is it is quite often located on very high value real estate. I am not sure where the Coasties who are quartered there work as it is about half way between Reedsport and Coos Bay, but the view is probably worth the commute. The lighthouse is quite a way in land and overlooks some of the Oregon Dunes that stretch between Reedsport and Coos Bay.

We stopped for the night in Gold Beach and found a nice little Camp Ground right on the beach for a very reasonab le price. The very light haze that had followed us down the coast was still present so the sunset was not as spectacular as the location led us to believe it would be.